Center Stage: Garreg Mach Monastery (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

In “Center Stage,” Wolfman Jew discusses environments and level design across the games industry. They may be single levels, larger sandboxes, or broader settings. They may be as small as a room and as large as a world. Some may not even be good. But they are all interesting.

Thanks to NantenJex and Cart Boy for edits.

Standing at the center of the continent of Fódlan is Garreg Mach Monastery. In a land governed by the Adrestian Empire, Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and city-states of the Leicester Alliance, it holds sway as the headquarters of the dominating Church of Seiros. Its steep cliffs make it impossible to besiege; its plumb trade routes keep it wealthy. And by being a microstate with legal independence, it acts as safe ground for the three continental powers, all of whom have spent centuries in an uneasy peace.

Image: Fire Emblem Wiki. Garreg Mach is nestled perfectly in the middle of everything, as seen in the game’s very cool and slightly unreadable map.

Part of what makes Garreg Mach so important is how it’s bound itself to the political futures of each state. Alongside being the headquarters of a religious institution so strong that its armies can cross borders with impunity, it houses an Officer’s Academy for the political future of Fódlan. It’s a military and political school for the noblesse oblige, and while nominally agnostic and egalitarian its function is to place teenagers of privilege under the influence of the church. The Imperial Year is 1180 and in one year’s time, the powers and church will go to war with these students as its prosecutors. What they learn in class will define that war.

This political quagmire is now home to a new teacher, a mercenary hired on the whims of the church’s archbishop. Alongside fighting bandits and uncovering a conspiracy, Professor Byleth Eisner has the job of teaching one of the student houses: Adrestia’s Black Eagles, Faerghus’ Blue Lions, or Leicester’s Golden Deer. While their students live and die on the battlefield, with its addicting grid-based RPG battles, the copious backstory and character interactions happen at the Monastery. But what’s most intriguing about Garreg Mach is not its role in a plot but its role as the hub world of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

Image: Source Gaming. The in-game map of the hub during the second act of the game. Every blue dot is one of your units.

For whatever reason, Nintendo’s premier tactical strategy series never used hubs, the kinds of explorable central headquarters employed by the likes of Super Mario 64 or Dark Souls. There was a zoomed-out base in Fire Emblem Fates, and Fire Emblem Gaiden had several small towns, but these were flourishes for menus representing castles or caravans. That’s how you read dialogue, purchased items, and chose missions. They weren’t real, which isn’t a problem but is peculiar. Hubs are a natural part of many games across genre; they let you leisurely explore before choosing a direction. Fire Emblem’s a bit of an outlier by avoiding them. Perhaps Intelligent Systems never felt a need to create a hero who could move off a grid.

And yet Three Houses added it in 2019, breaking a tradition that had been around before Marky Mark had a Funky Bunch. Byleth can walk around in 3D in between battles and explore the contours of their home, something unthinkable to the likes of Lyn or Chrom or Seliph. Garreg Mach was one of the bigger points of discussion around the game after its excellent character writing and obtuse, multi-pronged plot. It was criticized for its size and repetitiveness and lauded for its defined setting. But why was it so special? I think to answer that question, it’s best to look at how the Monastery works as a hub.

Image: Source Gaming. The Sunday menu shows daily events, birthdays, and the required monthly battle.

Three Houses is divided into two main phases: battles and the monastery. The former covers the series’ patented tactical strategy goodness. The latter covers everything else. That includes things like the certification exams, which promote characters into different classes, as well as the actual teaching simulation. Every Monday Byleth performs a lecture, fields questions, assigns weeklong jobs and academic goals, and tutors students one-on-one. It’s fairly cut and dry, though it’s a great way to direct your students’ growth. The experience is also improved by virtue of taking place in a lecture hall you can physically go to—if only on Sundays, your day off.

Sundays loom large; it’s free time you don’t have to spend explaining to Caspar von Bergliez that he shouldn’t only major in boxing, and there’s plenty to do. You can garden, fish, and schlep about to talk to the students and faculty. Direct invitations are the main way to recruit people outside your House; it’s also a great way to learn about the cast and get a feel for the month’s events. You have quests, too, though most exist to push you into exploring the campus. All of it helps improve your Professor Level, a stat tied to the daily number of “Activities” you can enjoy.

Image: Source Gaming. Busybody Annette and anime Michael C. Hall lookalike Lorenz both like choir practice—though the latter isn’t likely to get much out of the buffs it gives to his Faith stat.

Activities are whatever the game treats as a serious time expenditure. Talking to people is fine, but spending time with them is an event. That can take several forms: eating lunch, cooking dishes, singing in church, having a tea party, even betting on them in fights. You can also spend that time being instructed by a colleague, since Byleth’s position as teacher offers them far fewer opportunities to improve their own skills (which are also tied to recruitment). All of these have distinct benefits, including ones that aren’t clear from the outset.

The biggest and most obvious is the raising of Support, the stat that determines interpersonal relationships. If Byleth does something with someone, like eating pickled rabbit skewers or standing next to them during combat, it improves their standing. If it involves party members who have a “Support Level” (other characters can befriend only a fraction of the cast), that improves their standing, too. Support gives you bonuses in combat and cutscenes rife with character development. It’s the bread and butter of Fire Emblem storytelling, what powers romances, friendship, and battlefield success. If you want to see your units grow, get “paired endings” with compatible partners, or increase their chances of survival, you’re gonna need them to spend time with you and each other.

Image: Source Gaming. Byleth, Edelgard, and Dorothea have excellent stories, and they’re all powerful fighters. Building support lets their stories play out and make them even stronger.

A second benefit is Motivation. The tutoring portion of Monday’s lecture only works on kids who are engaged. Each session depletes their enthusiasm, and getting it back requires doing Activities, giving them items, or having them be the MVP of a battle (which is of course not reliable). If not enough people are motivated, at least some of your lecture will be wasted. That’s not good when tutoring raises Support and helps your students discover a hidden aptitude for skills. So you need them energized, and that means spending time with them.

Like most Nintendo games, this is a system of loops. The primary goal in Fire Emblem is to win battles, the secondary goal is to deepen the bonds of the cast, and both interact. Characters with high Support give their friends buffs, and units who fight together build Support. Everything else feeds into these, whether in manipulating how your allies evolve or building friendships that keep them emotionally richer. Of course, the side things interact as well (finding seeds to grow into vegetables you can cook in meals with students, for instance), which is why everything you do increases that Professor Level and gets you closer to doing more things next time.

Image: Source Gaming. Fishing isn’t considered an Activity, so you can do it as much as you want. Plus you can cook what you catch, and it does give a few points into the Professor Level.

You can also give up your time off, which has some value. The Sunday can be spent in a series of optional battles; those can be Paralogues (side stories about certain characters) or generic fights to grind for experience or Support. There’s an option for bringing in a colleague as a guest lecturer, which effectively gives your students another round of skill enhancement. You can also rest the day away, which moderately repairs unique magical weapons and does effectively nothing else. In practice, though, it’s better to take one week for battles, maybe two sometimes, but otherwise hang around the Monastery.

But all of this is still, at its core, abstracted. If Byleth wants to cook a meal with Ashe to build a relationship (and hopefully recruit him from Blue Lion House to the far cooler Black Eagles), there’s no mini-game; they just have a stock cutscene. There are other mini-games, like the overproduced but charming Tea Time, but all of them could have been put in a menu. Just scroll through your literal in-game rolodex, press a button to put work into Dorothea or Leonie or whoever, and be done with it. Some criticisms of Three Houses stemmed from finding the monastery too big, and that you spend too much time running from one conversation to the next. But having the space is important.

Image: Source Gaming. The Monastery from afar in an FMV cutscene. The game is good at always making clear that it can be as imposing and threatening as it is safe.

Because it’s an actual space. Unlike the obviously unreal war camps of Fire Emblem Awakening, Garreg Mach is a physical location with avenues and areas. As you progress, you mentally map how the dining hall connects to the reception hall, courtyard, and dormitories. You can associate the garden with the fishing hole as the place to earn easy experience, since they’re both near the southern tip. The place is, for the most part, organized like an actual complex; there are a few ways to get to anywhere. And despite being safe, it’s good at not having everything be equally homey. The giant northernmost cathedral is lonely, oppressive, and far less comfortable than the dorms or marketplace. This is a setting, and that adds a lot on its own.

Each chapter also brings small changes, whether they open up more of the monastery or add time-sensitive events. Characters also move to different locations, which while not the most immersive thing (they stay there for the whole month) is still more dynamic than just clicking on them in a list. They generally choose places that fit their personality, which can help you learn more about them. The Monastery is actually a lot like the Normandy from Mass Effect, which served as a way to relax and chat with your friends. This is what drives the experience of your first free Sunday of a chapter; you run from section to section, chat up each NPC, and then figure out how to spend your time.

Image: Source Gaming. It’s Alois, the dopey but lovable knight who unknowingly holds a few pieces of the puzzle.

It’s also important to put you in the Monastery given its importance. It’s the school in the game’s first half, your base of operations in the second, and a place around which the world revolves. There’s even a library that exists just to carry backstory details—helpful for the most lore-heavy game in the franchise (and the DLC lets you install a second one). A lot of the plot and optional stories dive into the darker histories of Fódlan, and as the seat of cultural power the Monastery hides many secrets. Whether it’s a mysterious unmarked grave or a set of odd statues, there’s always something worth investigating.

Some fights get into this, too. Every chapter ends the month with a battle, and more than a few are set near, in the crypts beneath, or at the Monastery itself. You may be tasked with protecting hallowed ground or invading it outright. These are not places you get to physically explore outside of the battles, tragically, so you don’t get to have the personal investment of seeing the stables burning after you’ve walked past them a dozen times. But it’s still cool, especially once the second act starts in earnest and you trample across the continental map. The place always feels concrete amidst the political machinations.

This fits in with Three Houses’ downloadable expansion, The Ashen Wolves, which is set in a town of outcasts buried beneath Garreg Mach. The Abyss is its own mini-hub, and while fairly small it’s filled with weirder and more unique features (like shops that trade in alternate currencies and rare items, and an NPC who manipulates Support levels). But it excels most at expanding the history of the Monastery by crafting a world underneath it. It’s always clear that this odd refuge of the marginalized and lost is literally under your students’ feet, even before you climb back up and the cathedral itself becomes the setting of the DLC’s final battle.

Image: Source Gaming. The final boss battle of the Ashen Wolves, set in the very cathedral that houses choir practice, stat bonuses, and Dear Abby-esque anonymous notes.

This isn’t to say there are no issues with the Monastery. The criticism that Byleth spends way too much time dashing from room to room in a once-over, hitting up people for conversation and searching for items before regularly fast-traveling, isn’t incorrect. While I like the vibe of spending my first free Sunday getting an idea of the month’s events, that still leaves a lot of time left. It doesn’t help that the placement of the mini-games and Activities is, while geographically sensible, spread out in ways that are a pain to run to.

The size itself is a thing, too, partially because it shows the game’s graphical compromises most clearly (which didn’t bother me, but did others) and partially because it’s a lot of space. Often empty space, too, once Act II kicks out everyone you didn’t recruit in a culling that could be from five or so to over thirty of the forty-one total heroes. Perhaps you didn’t need the second floor for the wealthier students; barely anyone is ever there. And narratively, it’s certainly weird for the class to return between every battle when they’re in the thick of a gigantic war.

Image: Source Gaming. Byleth’s incredible academic skills let her phase through a door! And… the columns outside, too. Some of the graphical limitations are pretty goofy.

But the values of Garreg Mach outweigh those, I’d say. It provides a real grounding space for the broader conflict, one where the various characters and politics can all interact and be easily explored. It’s also iconic as a location, which Fire Emblem sometimes struggles with outside of especially challenging maps. And it’s quite fun as this mishmash of teen angst and political machinations. When Act II starts up in earnest and Byleth either walks or fights their way to the Monastery, now partially destroyed from war, it feels justified that their class would repurpose it as their new base.

And it’s likely future Fire Emblem games will have hub worlds of their own, and not just this year’s Three Houses spinoff Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (which made a smaller, denser, more accessible base camp). One rumor about the upcoming Fire Emblem Engage is that its explorable base will be a flying castle that drives you from battle to battle. That’s more functional for a kingdom-spanning adventure, and it could be more compelling as well. But it would still be iterating on this idea, one whose potential Garreg Mach Monastery shows very well. Hubs can connect parts of the plot, non-combative spaces can help the pacing of even the most action-heavy game, and Fire Emblem can use more time off its grid. This hub did that while also building the world of Three Houses, and for all its flaws it’s quite impactful.